


Story Time with Rumpelstiltskin

by silveradept



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 15:16:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7762831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle and Rumpelstiltskin share a story every night. Tonight, Belle decides she wants to tell <em>Rumpelstiltskin</em>.</p><p>He is not amused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Story Time with Rumpelstiltskin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sobriquett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sobriquett/gifts).



Their tradition, when they had been living together, was that Belle would pick a book from the library after dinner and read to him, until the book had finished, or his patience had. Rumpelstiltskin had been hesitant at first, since it meant the possibility of attachment to what was supposed to be a servant girl or a prize, another thing to be bargained for or with. The first night, she read him a childhood tale from her world, about a dragon and a sunflower, and he had been utterly charmed by her reading. The story was silly pulp about how some creatures will happily choose peace if you ask them, and he spent the next few minutes explaining to her how dragons really were, but it was a nice moment, one that he didn't know he missed until it was done. The next day she had chosen a book that turned out to be a ledger for a long-forgotten duchy, and had done her best to inject life, vibrancy, and speculation about their lives from the dry columns and figures.

For weeks she had shared all kinds of stories with him, surprising him with books he didn't know were in his library, stories others told about their lands, myths and legends, and occasionally even books of magic that he had carelessly left around at least a decade or two ago. They had covered all of the stories in the Tales of a Thousand Nights and One Night in considerably less time than that. The stories reminded him of other adventures he had done, deals he had made, and the power gained. Sometimes he shared a little bit of those stories with Belle. Nothing too personal, of course.

He had no reason to expect this night would be any different than the others. She had a book in her lap, he stood near the table, and then she began to read.

> "There was once a miller who was poor, but he had one beautiful daughter. It happened one day that he came to speak with the king, and, to give himself consequence, he told him that he had a daughter who could spin gold out of straw."

"Absolutely not," he said, crossing the room toward the door.

"Rumpel, wait!" she cried. "You promised you would listen to my stories."

"I _promised_ ," he said acidly, "to listen to your stories for as long as my patience lasted. I have no patience for that story."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's...inaccurate. Distasteful. It makes a mockery of the powers of the Dark One." Rumpelstiltskin giggled a little bit. "The girl wasn't the daughter of a miller. She was the youngest daughter of a king in a far off land."

"All right," she said. "lets make a deal, then. How about I read the story from the book and you tell me what really happened?" The opportunity to learn more about Rumpel delighted Belle. He had been slowly warming up to her over time, and she hoped that he could eventually trust her with the details of his past.

Rumpelstiltskin considered Belle's offer. There wasn't anything too damaging in the telling, and she might appreciate the real story. Plus, it was in his nature to want and accept deals. Deals meant power that could be used later.

"All right, dearie, you've got a deal. The miller's daughter was a princess, like I said, and she came to the king to try and get him to part with one of his sons. Fortunately for her, she was very pretty. Unfortunately for her, the king was very greedy, so her father decided to say that they were descended from the line of Midas and had learned how to control it, so that they could turn anything to gold that they wanted to. As you might guess, that got the king's attention, but he wanted proof."

Belle read the next page of the book.

> The king said to the miller: "That is an art that pleases me well; if thy daughter is as clever as you say, bring her to my castle to-morrow, that I may put her to the proof."
> 
> When the girl was brought to him, he led her into a room that was quite full of straw, and gave her a wheel and spindle, and said: "Now set to work, and if by the early morning thou hast not spun this straw to gold thou shalt die."

"Such archaic language," Rumpelstiltskin said, a chiding tone in his voice. "Nobody outside of very formal occasions even approximates that kind of diction."

"Did he put the princess in the room with the straw, though?"

"Oh, yes, dearie. Straw, old coins, and a building brick, just to see how far things could go. If she could do it, he would have told her to turn his entire palace's outer wall into gold, just to annoy everyone around him."

> And he shut the door himself, and left her there alone. And so the poor miller's daughter was left there sitting, and could not think what to do for her life: she had no notion how to set to work to spin gold from straw, and her distress grew so great that she began to weep. Then all at once the door opened, and in came a little man, who said: "Good evening, miller's daughter; why are you crying?"

Rumpelstiltskin laughed. "Do I look like a small man to you?"

"Dwarves can be cute," she protested. "Just like the Dark One can be handsome and caring." Rumpelstiltskin waved away the compliment irritably and indicated she should continue.

> "Oh!" answered the girl, "I have got to spin gold out of straw, and I don't understand the business." Then the little man said: "What will you give me if I spin it for you?" - "My necklace," said the girl. The little man took the necklace, seated himself before the wheel, and whirr, whirr, whirr! three times round and the bobbin was full; then he took up another, and whirr, whirr, whirr! three times round, and that was full; and so he went on till the morning, when all the straw had been spun, and all the bobbins were full of gold.

Belle set the book down and looked at Rumpelstiltskin, expecting an explanation.

"We made a deal," he said. "She gave me the necklace, which had a very powerful enchantment on it, and I turned everything into gold so that she could stay alive. I didn't need any help from a spinning wheel to make it work, though. There's a disturbing trend in story-writers to use such strange tools to carry their enchantments. Who wants to have to carry a magic spinning wheel?" Belle was fairly certain she has seen exactly that in another room of the castle, but she didn't say anything about it.

"The next night," he continued without prompting, "when she had an even bigger room of things to turn to gold, including much more straw, we made another deal for her ring, which also had a strong enchantment on it, and I made the bigger room full of gold as well. That king wouldn't have been able to spend all the gold he had at that point in his kingdom, but apparently he was thinking about trying to conquer his neighbors for some time, and wanted yet more gold to hire more soldiers. Since she was afraid he would kill her, she was more than ready to part with her jewels. I used them much later to...well, that's a story for another time."

Belle was on the edge of her chair, listening. "What happened on the third night? Why did you make a deal for a baby?"

Rumpelstiltskin snorted. "I didn't make a deal for a baby. Children are loud, messy, and they don't understand why things are forbidden. The Dark One, changing nappies and burping? I think not. Now, there are more than a few creatures that would find baby parts and souls helpful." Belle shuddered at the thought, which pleased him. Fear had to be properly maintained, or it might be replaced with something far more dangerous. "I made a deal for a birthright. After she told me all about the plan to marry her or kill her, I made a deal with the princess that I would inherit the birthright of her first-born child. Once I had a legitimate right to rule, I could use that kingdom to further my ends. I kind of like how it turned out, though, with the implied cannibalism. Makes me seem much more like a proper Dark One."

Belle turned a few pages in the book. "So, a year goes by, and she gets pregnant, and then you go back and demand your birthright?"

"Oh, it was several years, dearie - the princess had training from a very wise herbalist who made sure she knew how not to have children if she didn't want them. The entire kingdom was in an uproar about the Barren Queen. Eventually things got so bad that the king acted on a rumor that he had heard about a magic man that granted wishes to those willing to bargain with him..."

Belle looked horrified. "You made a deal with the king to get his wife pregnant, so that you could collect on your deal with his wife? Rumpel, how could you?"

"A deal is a deal, dearie. All magic comes with a price. This wasn't any different. The king made a deal for a son by his wife, which I provided to him. That the father of his child wasn't him--"

"--Rumpel!--"

"--wasn't part of the deal. Gods and heroes don't usually get stopped by herbal remedies, you know."

Belle could not muster the words to continue, so she turned back to the book and began to read again, her imagination of what had happened to the princess seeping into the narrative and giving it a much more bitter tone than would be appropriate for a child's bedtime story.

> In a year's time she brought a fine child into the world, and thought no more of the little man; but one day he came suddenly into her room, and said: "Now give me what you promised me." The queen was terrified greatly, and offered the little man all the riches of the kingdom if he would only leave the child; but the little man said: "No, I would rather have something living than all the treasures of the world." Then the queen began to lament and to weep, so that the little man had pity upon her. "I will give you three days," said he, "and if at the end of that time you cannot tell my name, you must give up the child to me."

Belle set the book down with a thump. "I guess that's all a lie, then, too. You're too hard-hearted to give someone an opportunity to get out of one of your deals."

"My heart is black, Belle, but it also sees the bigger picture. What the king offered me in return for the son was much greater than what the queen offered me for the straw and the gold. If I let her off from the first deal, she'd keep it hidden from her husband. And he would keep from her that he went and saw the Dark One to get the son he clearly wanted. Then I would get what I wanted when the time came, and it would be too late for anyone to do anything about it." Rumpelstiltskin giggled again. "As plans go, this one was pretty good!"

"So you made her try and guess your name?"

"Feh! Nothing so silly as _that_. You see, the king had learned about an artifact of great power, one that could possibly even break the power of the Dark One, that accompanied the Dark One wherever he went. The king and queen sent messengers and knights and soldiers to try and find this magical thing, wherever it might be in the kingdom. It took them months of looking, not days. If it wasn't for some itinerant hero, they would never have gotten close to it."

Belle was ready to ask more questions, trying to learn more about this side of Rumpelstiltskin. Realizing how open he had been about himself, and taking into account her clear anger at what had happened to the princess, Rumpelstiltskin closed the book in her hands. "No more stories tonight. There are floors to be mopped and hearths to be swept. We've spent enough time here." He walked out of the story room, closing the door firmly behind himself.

Belle smiled to herself, having seen through his statements to the care underneath. Every time they shared stories, she learned a little more about him, and she loved what she heard. Except when he was a brutal monster, of course, but she was beginning to question whether he was that all the time, or even as bad a Dark One as he claimed.

Her eyes drifted back to the last page of the book. They'd gone so far, so there wouldn't be any harm in finishing.

> And then she said: "Then perhaps your name is Rumpelstiltskin?"
> 
> "The devil told you that! The devil told you that!" cried the little man, and in his anger he stamped with his right foot so hard that it went into the ground above his knee; then he seized his left foot with both his hands in such a fury that he split in two, and there was an end of him.

Belle set the book down and closed it. It sounded like the king, or the princess, had found whatever the artifact was and had used it to stop him. And while the effect of the tantrum was clearly exaggerated, she had seen that kind of anger in him when she did something he truly didn't like, rather than something he didn't really care about. Those times, she had locked herself in the library and refused to come out. He had proven how useless it was by appearing himself on the other side of the door immediately, but after being struck solidly in the face with one of the thicker tomes one too many times upon surprising her, he learned that space was sometimes the best thing a woman could have.

"Belle!" Rumpelstiltskin shouted from the doorway, sticking his head back in. "Chores! Now!"

"Coming!" she called back, and hurried to put the book back on the shelf she had taken it from before following Rumpelstiltskin to the night's chores. Perhaps tomorrow night, she would find out what that artifact really was.


End file.
